Free App Roundup! Avoid ZX and More!

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, so let’s get back on this train! Today we’re going to take a look a few of my favorite free apps for the iOS8 platform. Keep in mind that many of these apps are only free for a short time, so act fast to get yours! You ready? Let’s do this!

PDF readers are honestly a dime a dozen. What makes Easy Annotate stand out to me is that it is one of the best for studying two separate texts at the same time. When comparing and contrasting papers, either grading submitted PDFs from students on your phone or comparing study-guides from multiple sources, this is one of the best applications you’re going to find to help you get what you need crammed into that brain of yours. Side-by-side comparisons of PDFS, along with notations and reference linking between two separate documents make this a must-have for students who use their mobile devices more often than their physical books. And let’s be honest, that’s most of you anymore.

Word with Friends is one of my favorite games on any device. And while I’m not much of a card-game kind of person, Poker God was surprisingly fun and easy to get into without much skill required, given that it plays a great deal like Words with Friends. Take your time with your turns, the game will be waiting when you are ready to get to it, and notifications will alert you when it is your turn to play. An easy to follow UI is a great aspect of this fun little game and keeps the learning curve at a minimum. And the best part is that this normally somewhat pricey app is free for this weekend only. When you sign up with Poker God, everything is automatically unlocked for you. But this one, like all of our apps here, is one you need to move quickly on or you may miss out on premium features.

I am a huge fan of the retro arcade movement. Some of my favorite games and ones I still play often are Galaga, Centipede, and Super Breakout. So when I spotted Avoid ZX on the App Store for free, I jumped at it. In the end, there’s little innovative to the gameplay, but that’s the appeal of this nostalgic look back at gaming. Avoid ZX is 100 percent a runner. You have your arrow and you must weave through each level without getting hit. Rack up the points, post to the Leaderboards, and enjoy the old-school soundtrack. The ZX Spectrum, which this game was modeled after, had some real gems floating about. I’m all for anything that reminds us of the early days of gaming and possibly gives us some perspective on how far we’ve come. And that 1-bit music and top-down, 2D runner style doesn’t get much more early than Pong itself.